In an existing communications network, a wireless access point (AP) device may connect a terminal device to a network. Generally, to keep information synchronization with the terminal device, the AP device periodically broadcasts a beacon frame, and needs to respond to a network entry request of the terminal device at any time; therefore, the AP device remains in an awake state all the time. However, in some periods of time, the AP device is in an idle state, that is, no terminal device requests to access the network, which therefore causes high power consumption of the AP device. To reduce power consumption of the AP device, a sleep and wakeup mechanism of the AP device is introduced. When the AP device is in a sleep state, only some modules are in an awake state, and the other modules are all in a power-off state.
In the prior art, an AP device periodically sleeps and wakes up according to a sleep time period and a wakeup time period that are preset by a user. However, when the AP device is in the sleep time period, if a terminal device needs to access a network, the AP device cannot provide support, and can connect the terminal device to the network only after entering the wakeup time period. Therefore, the existing process of waking up an AP device is relatively inflexible.